Tit Tat Toe

A small boy was squalling in the seat opposite, and Carl took him from his tired mother and lured him into a game of tit-tat-toe. ❋ Sinclair Lewis (1918)

Myself, I'm certificated twice or three times over; but I can only assure you that I wanted to kick myself when, after I'd spent a day and a sleepless night over the job, I saw the game of tit-tat-toe that Rooum made of it in an hour or two. ❋ Oliver [pseud.] Onions (1917)

She had a family tartan -- heather brown, with Lincoln green tit-tat-toe crisscrosses -- and she had learned how to walk from a thousand years of strong-walking ancestors. ❋ Gouverneur Morris (1914)

Here and there were stealthy games of tit-tat-toe, practiced, doubtless, behind the teacher's back. ❋ Fritz August Gottfried Endell (1906)

On scraps of paper we played tit-tat-toe; we improvised a checkerboard and played checkers. ❋ Dillon Wallace (1901)

Maybe the teacher's nerves were too highly strung to endure the squeaking of gritty pencils, but I think the real reason for their banishment is, that slates invited too strongly the game of noughts and crosses, or tit-tat-toe, three in ❋ Eugene Wood (1891)

But if slates favored tit-tat-toe, they also favored ciphering, and nothing but good can come from that. ❋ Eugene Wood (1891)